18.06.2011 | 00:34 | Aurobinda MAHAPATRA (India) …Can international community play a meaning role in the post-NATO Taliban? It will depend on how the regional and international powers formulate their policies while respecting mutual differences. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization has taken a positive approach to the scenario and has declared its intention to help develop ‘a peaceful, stable and developing state’ in Afghanistan…more

SCO steps out of Central Asia

17.06.2011 | 14:46 | Melkulangara BHADRAKUMAR The Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s 10th anniversary summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, saw confident steps taken towards integrating the entire Eurasian landmass. While the planned induction of India and Pakistan will create a pan-regional reach that supercedes the United States’ “Great Central Asia” strategy, SCO efforts to assume responsibility for post-2014 Afghanistan are a direct challenge to US plans to establish permanent military bases there…more

Republican furies

17.06.2011 | 00:01 | Leonid SAVIN The US foreign policy usually develops in several ways which differ in terms of methods used to achieve this or that goal on the international scene. Right-wing Republicans, or neoconservatives, are known for promoting the most aggressive approaches in foreign policy: they see Russia, as well as some other countries, as the quintessence of evil. Many of them are members of radical protestant sects. There are two most prominent figures among them: the former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen…more

No limits when spooks have a brawl

16.06.2011 | 00:00 | Melkulangara BHADRAKUMAR A war of words has erupted between CIA and ISI. The CIA fired the first shot by giving an exclusive story to NYT that ISI has picked up the US agency’s Pakistani informers who tipped off the location of Osama bin Laden’s villa in Abbottabad. Then in the typical style spy agencies plant stories, a nugget was put it into the NYT column that one of the informers was a Pakistani army officer in the rank of Major…more

Iran is too important for Moscow…

15.06.2011 | 07:57 | Dmitriy SEDOV The standoff between Iran and Israel has long overgrown the regional scale and evolved into a conflict between Iran and the Western civilization. The West reasonably perceives Iran as an anti-globalist fortress in Asia. Tehran was quick to understand that an epoch of reliance on soft power wold follow the US withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan and that the “democratization” efforts would be focused onto Iran…more

BrahMos and India-Russia Partnership

14.06.2011 | 00:00 | Aurobinda MAHAPATRA (India) On 12th of June a decade ago was launched the BrahMos cruise missile from India’s eastern coast interim range of Chandipur-on-sea… The current CEO of BrahMos Aerospace, A. Sivathanu Pillai has predicted that within a decade, the joint venture will capture twenty percent of global missile market, currently dominated by the US and France. Countries from Latin America and Middle East have already expressed interest in buying the missile…more

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation`s Impact on the Region

13.06.2011 | 00:00 | Najmuddin A. SHAIKH On June 15th the Shanghai Cooperation organisation will have its Summit meeting in Astana marking the 10th Anniversary of its founding… It is of course undeniable that in so far as the countries of the region are concerned the focus of attention will be on what the Summit chooses to do with regard to the question of expanding membership to the three states now enjoying “observer status” – Pakistan, India and Iran – and about granting observer status or more to Afghanistan…more

Gazprom vis-a-vis Germany

12.06.2011 | 18:32 | Natalia MEDEN Gazprom CEO A. Miller revealed no secret when he told in an interview to Germany’s Suddeutsche Zeitung that the Russian energy giant was interested in buying into E.ON or any of its subsidiaries. The acquisition of foreign assets is built into Gazprom’s widely publicized strategy aimed at creating integrated supply chains stretching from gas fields in Russia to end buyers in various countries, with priority being given to Europe…more

Fascist Historical Myth Reanimated

11.06.2011 | 20:20 | Yuriy RUBTSOV There is no shortage of arguments to challenge the groundless and deeply unfair claim that the USSR and the fascist Germany were equally responsible for the outbreak of World War II. Even a sketchy juxtaposition of Berlin’s and Moscow’s pre-war military plans highlights the fundamental difference in the two countries’ intentions… Hitler approved the Operation Barbarossa plan for a war against the USSR on December 18, 1940… The end goal of the German campaign was to create a protective barrier against Russia, an Asian monster in the terms of Goebbels’s propaganda, along the Arkhangelsk – Volga line…more